(This is the second entry in a series of essays on ideas about things that should be done with sudoku and sudoku championships. The first, on playoff puzzles of increasing difficulty, is here.)

The 2nd World Sudoku Championship in Prague, Czech Republic web-cast the entire championship, including the playoffs. While watching solvers focused squarely on papers at their desks for hours could not have been that exciting, watching the four simultaneous solutions of grids during the four playoff rounds certainly was for those following in the audience and at home. However, now two and a half years after the event, none of this video that was web-cast live, especially of the playoffs, has ever been released. Two "telephone videos" from Simon Anthony of the UK which show me checking puzzles with my finger are the only digital record I have of my first and most memorable championship.

The 3rd World Sudoku Championship in Goa, India similarly used cameras to display the final puzzles of the four finalists but no video from those organizers was ever made available either. The German team posted some clips from the final toroidal puzzle and another earlier one where I'm already done and doing a word find, and I have a commentated (and time-edited) version of the "goes to 11" classic final puzzle #4 from the preview copy of the Sudokumentary, but the latter cannot be made publicly viewable. Still, what I do have suggests that the finals are compelling theater if any organizer would ever put together a full clip of the finals. (Note: the Germans also posted video from Zilina including this underwatched gem, the infamous 6...4...5...3...2...1... start to the non-sudoku final puzzle, which speaks for itself about the bumbling nature of this "sudoku" "championship" quite well.)

For three years, the US National Sudoku Championship has also had videographers covering the event, as well as a wealth of photographers from various outlets assaulting the stage during the playoff rounds. It has never affected me much as a solver (unlike the press in Lucca at WSC1), but it certainly keeps the audience from seeing everything. There has also always been a camera platform in front of the main stage where at least two tripod-stabilized cameras have recorded video, sometimes for the purpose of displaying the finals to the audience - although only one board at a time is shown and this is still not in an easy to follow format as you need to simultaneously assimilate where three solvers are, not just one. Regardless, none of this video - aside from say 3 seconds of me starting a grid, or declaring finished (for better or worse) is available anywhere online. Some of the unreleased tape from 2009 may be being used as "evidence" in an investigation that is "still ongoing" but undecided on whether Eugene Varshavsky, aka the "Sudobomber", legitimately qualified as a finalist in the advanced division two weeks ago.

With the past as preface, my question this week is: "What if organizers, realizing digital media and venues like YouTube can be used to tell stories about an event, actually bothered to show the finals of these tournaments in a compelling way?" Watching any athlete performing at their best can be very thrilling to those with limited and with great experience (the better you are at golf, the more you can appreciate Tiger Woods). Seeing top sudoku solvers approach a puzzle, particularly a challenging one with 10,000 dollars on the line, would be interesting to enthusiasts and possibly encourage both future participation and increased media coverage. Since organizers are in complete failure on providing a video story of the final puzzles of past US and World events, I've taken advantage of my loving parents who videotaped my finals performance to show you a third of what could be done. Here is this year's 2009 Sudoku National Championship Advanced Final for one of the three competitors, which shows me going from hero to goat in about 3 seconds. I've cut the last 3 minutes of the video I have, which is basically me sitting, smiling, and talking to camera people, as I still think I've won during this time as do the judges. I do not have tape of Tammy's last few minutes of finishing her puzzle, or of me congratulating her and pointing out my error, or of me telling Tournament Director Will Shortz that there are three errors on my grid, although the Inquirer's news piece gave some of that. I also do not have any more tape of Eugene standing still, but you get the feel for that from this already.



Reviewing the video establishes three things:

First, I was well ahead of Eugene's 8 minute point after just ten seconds, with almost all the 9's and 3's placed. Extrapolating progress and relative difficulty of placements, he might be finishing about now.

Second, while Eugene does gets the 9 in R1C3 quickly, he does not chain another 9 immediately into box 7 (and then another in box 8) which any experienced solver of sudoku would eventually think to do. He never gets this 9 at all, in fact. Watching carefully, you should see both me (and during the pan Tammy) do the 9 to 9 to 9 relay right away which each and every other advanced solver would likely do as well.

Third, and certainly news to me, my error in the puzzle was almost certainly caused by sloppy handwriting accentuated by the white board format. The rate at which I write the 8 followed by a 6 in box 6 tells me I was reading the two markings in R5C78 as a 6 note, when it actually was an 8 note. My duplicated notes are written a bit faster than usual on the white board (I normally just write once on the gridlines on paper) and this sometimes leads to clarity errors (see for example the 7 note in column 9 I go back and fix earlier when my first mark did not end up being a 7). Here, in my haste, I didn't close my 8's. Since I would have taken a longer fraction of time to search the box and at least one of the row/column if I was checking for what was missing there, what the video clearly tells me I was doing when I made my error was propagating digits by reflex off of notes and not thinking or scanning at all. Penmanship, on the large board, cost me 6,000 dollars and a spot on the US team.

You may wonder why I posted the unedited video (with just the audience/competition sound and no extra commentary or unnecessary use of the first/last movement of the Carmina Burana). First, I wanted to demonstrate the current sterile environment in which the finals go on which is sadly nowhere near as compelling as the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament where I watch the finals every year afterwards online. Stage control is much worse in Philadelphia; my parents were filming from the front row and you can tell, with judges and camera people circling, that the observation of these puzzles is hardly ideal for the audience. Second, commentary during the finals is a deserving future topic of another What If? so I only wanted to post an unedited story this time and then go further into the realm of what could be in the future, maybe with the 2008 advanced finals or beginner/intermediate finals from this year.